MGLRU gives high priority to folios mapped in page tables. As a result,
folio_set_active() is invoked for all folios read during page faults. In
practice, however, readahead can bring in many folios that are never
accessed via page tables.
A previous attempt by Lei Liu proposed introducing a separate LRU for
readahead[1] to make readahead pages easier to reclaim, but that approach
is likely over-engineered.
Before commit 4d5d14a01e ("mm/mglru: rework workingset protection"),
folios with PG_active were always placed in the youngest generation,
leading to over-protection and increased refaults. After that commit,
PG_active folios are placed in the second youngest generation, which is
still too optimistic given the presence of readahead. In contrast, the
classic active/inactive scheme is more conservative.
This patch switches to using folio_mark_accessed() and
begins prefaulted file folios from the second oldest
generation instead of active generations.
We should also adjust the following accordingly:
- WORKINGSET_ACTIVATE: aligned with setting active for refaulted workingset
folios;
- lru_gen_folio_seq(): place (pre)faulted file folios into the second
oldest generation;
- promote second-scanned folios to workingset in
folio_check_references(): we now have to depend on
folio_lru_refs() > 1, since we previously relied on PG_referenced
being set during the first scan, but PG_referenced is now set
earlier.
On x86, running a kernel build inside a memcg with a 1GB memory
limit using 20 threads.
w/o patch:
real 1m50.764s
user 25m32.305s
sys 4m0.012s
pswpin: 1333245
pswpout: 4366443
pgpgin: 6962592
pgpgout: 17780712
swpout_zero: 1019603
swpin_zero: 14764
refault_file: 287794
refault_anon: 1347963
w/ patch:
real 1m48.879s
user 25m29.224s
sys 3m37.421s
pswpin: 568480
pswpout: 2322657
pgpgin: 4073416
pgpgout: 9613408
swpout_zero: 593275
swpin_zero: 9118
refault_file: 262505
refault_anon: 577550
active/inactive LRU:
real 1m49.928s
user 25m28.196s
sys 3m40.740s
pswpin: 463452
pswpout: 2309119
pgpgin: 4438856
pgpgout: 9568628
swpout_zero: 743704
swpin_zero: 7244
refault_file: 562555
refault_anon: 470694
Lance and Xueyuan made a huge contribution to this patch through testing.
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/20260526130938.66253-1-baohua@kernel.org
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/20250916072226.220426-1-liulei.rjpt@vivo.com/ [1]
Signed-off-by: Barry Song (Xiaomi) <baohua@kernel.org>
Tested-by: Lance Yang <lance.yang@linux.dev>
Tested-by: Xueyuan Chen <xueyuan.chen21@gmail.com>
Cc: Pedro Falcato <pfalcato@suse.de>
Cc: Kairui Song <kasong@tencent.com>
Cc: Qi Zheng <qi.zheng@linux.dev>
Cc: Shakeel Butt <shakeel.butt@linux.dev>
Cc: wangzicheng <wangzicheng@honor.com>
Cc: Suren Baghdasaryan <surenb@google.com>
Cc: Lei Liu <liulei.rjpt@vivo.com>
Cc: Matthew Wilcox (Oracle) <willy@infradead.org>
Cc: Axel Rasmussen <axelrasmussen@google.com>
Cc: Yuanchu Xie <yuanchu@google.com>
Cc: Wei Xu <weixugc@google.com>
Cc: Will Deacon <will@kernel.org>
Cc: Kalesh Singh <kaleshsingh@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
6cbdd9726f